5 day forecast
Cinemark to build new 12-screen movie theater in McCandless
Share with others:
Cinemark will build a 12-screen, all-digital movie theater at McCandless Crossing, the Texas-based exhibitor announced Thursday.
It is scheduled to open in fall 2012 and to feature stadium seating, wall-to-wall screens, all-digital projection, enhanced sound systems and a Cinemark XD Extreme Digital Cinema auditorium. The lobby will have self-serve concession stands, similar to Cinemark's theater in Robinson.
The new theater could be the death knell for the former Showcase Cinemas North, now operated by Rave Cinemas and located on a large plot of land that is for sale.
McCandless Crossing is near UPMC Passavant, La Roche College and McKnight Elementary School and north of Ross Park and Northway malls along McKnight Road.
The new theater, part of a proposed town center on the east side of McKnight with the main entrance on Duncan Avenue, will feature Cinemark's NextGen design concept. This will be the fourth Western Pennsylvania location for the chain, with others in Robinson, the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills in Frazer and Center, Beaver County.
The attraction is part of an overall plan that still needs final township approval.
"Cinemark currently operates three theaters and 46 screens in the Pittsburgh MSA," Alan Stock, Cinemark's chief executive officer, said in a news release.
"The new Cinemark XD Extreme Digital Cinema auditorium will be the second in the Pittsburgh area. The XD auditorium is the largest in the theater complex and offers a complete entertainment environment featuring a wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor screen, plush seating and a custom JBL sound system with higher end components and 7.1 capable digital surround sound."
Cinemark also will feature online "Print at Home" ticketing through www.cinemark.com.
"Cinemark's project will kick off McCandless Crossings' entertainment portion of the development, which will include specialty retailers, a high-end grocer, sit-down restaurants and new residential units," Kevin Dougherty, president of real estate company AdVenture Development, said in a press release.
"We are very excited about Cinemark joining our Phase 4 town center project," Mr. Dougherty later told the Post-Gazette. "It will be a great anchor and fill a void in the [movie] marketplace," he added.
Dougherty said AdVenture looked at Cinemark's theaters elsewhere and met with executives at the chain's headquarters and came away impressed.
The days of building enormous theaters the size of the AMC Loews at the Waterfront are gone.
With 12 screens, the McCandless theater will be smaller than the 16-screen venue at the new, bustling Settlers Ridge Center, which opened in October 2009. The location at Pittsburgh Mills mall near Tarentum debuted in July 2005 with 17 regular screens and one IMAX 3-D auditorium.
Cinemark Holdings Inc., headquartered in Plano, Texas, operates 430 theaters with 4,945 screens in the United States and Latin America, according to figures from Dec. 31, 2010. Earlier this week, it announced plans for a 14-screen theater outside of Forth Worth, Texas.
First Published April 1, 2011 12:00 am
